I have a golden canopy over my window by my computer desk here. The box elder tree has spun its gold. There's still a twinge of green to it but it's predominantly gold. Only the box elders have sprung into fall. The black walnuts, mulberries and sycamores are waiting for some other command. The squirrels have denuded the walnut trees of all their black treasures. I haven't heard plopping on the ground for three weeks now.

There were two days that a few nuts and other nut debris dropped into the pool spreading their dark dye in watery circles on the bottom. That wasn't so bad but what was maddening to clean was all the little maggots that dropped in with them. As the green casing darkens and rots, even as they hang on the tree, little white worms congregate to feast. I had to thoroughly scoop out the whole circumferance of the pool and still probably left dozens of them in there. But that's all past us now because a week later Bill took the pool down.

I've been feeding a possum and a couple of raccoons every night now. I throw stale bread and unused grapes down on the ground below my window here. After dark, I hear little tiny snaps in the tomato garden as a critter steps on the vines and I can also hear them as they rustle the dried leaves. Taking the flashlight I have by my side, I shine it out there and two little glowing eyes look back at me. They don't run. They feel they are a safe enough distance from me to keep exploring and eating.

The newest thing in my life is that I finally broke down and bought a new compuer. I like to play the Sims and had only bought one of the expansion packs that Maxis has come out with over the last several years. Well, I gave in and bought two more a week ago. Loaded one on my old machine and it wouldn't run smoothly. It jerked around and when I went to Old Town in Unleashed I could barely move my cursor around anywhere. That machine was woefully underpowered.

My dutiful husand tried with all his might to reconstruct a machine that Todd gave us last weekend. It was a faster running machine, just barely faster than the one I was using. He cussed and cursed and grumbled and griped for two days and handed me the best completed machine he could do. But it still ran jerkily and slow in the game. He said he couldn't do anything else outside of buying me a new computer. I had been thirsting for more than 4 GB on a hard drive anyway so I let him talk me into. it. I now have a 512 mghrz processor and 80 GB of hard drive, and 2 GB RAM. I loaded both the new expansion packs on and they run great! Plus everything else I usually use runs faster, too. I don't have video capture utilites yet so there won't be any pictures to go along with the pages for a short while. My ATI card was too old to use with this new computer and I didn't want to spend another $230 to get the newest ATI card right now. But, if you know my husband, he's working on finding a solution.

So, there is something to be said about getting a new computer. And that something is, WOW!